Issues, Contemporary

“ Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” (Prov. 29:18 KJV)

How many times have you and I heard people say something like “unless we have a goal in mind, we will fail”. They are used to the KJV where is says “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” But is that what it is really saying?

Of course, it is true that we must have a “vision” or “goal” to pursue something successfully, BUT that has nothing to do with this verse. The Hebrew word for “vision” is “ha-zon” in the sense of prophetic vision. A different word means “seer”. Actually, the old KJV was not far off, but the problem is that we have misunderstood the word “vision”. It does not mean a goal but refers to revelation from God. In other words, where there is neglect of revelation from God, the people “perish”. Then the word for “perish” really means to “cast off restraint”. Thus the ESV gives a more accurate translation:

“Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law” (Prov. 29:18 ESV)

When I was in high school, we had the Ten Commandments posted in the homerooms, and since the school was basically Christian and Jewish, we could agree on those Ten Words! But when people get rid of the Holy Scripture in public, they cast off restraint, which means they sin without restraint. Our whole society hates God’s written word because they hate the Triune God, and they especially hate His character as revealed in His commandments. We have fallen prey to values instead of loving His law. (Read Psalm 119, all of it!) We now want to suppress God’s words, such as homosexuality; choice instead of killing; we redefine marriage. In other words, the visible and audible presence of God’s word is being removed and so restraint not to sin is being removed.

(Article and picture used by permission.)

(26 July 2018)

R. J. Rushdoony

Theologian, philosopher, writer, dedicated his life to the scriptures. Here is his article from many decades ago:

The men of our times have no right to complain of the developing problems and crises of our world. When men trust in civil government rather than in God, they will always get more statist power in their lives and less of God’s power. When men trust in controls rather than freedom, they will get more controls unto slavery and less freedom.

What men trust in becomes the power over their lives, and the god a man worships is known by what a man trusts. Our coins still read, “In God we trust,” but men address their hopes and prayers to the national and state capitols and then wonder why God abandons them.

St. Paul declared, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. 6:7). Harvest time is approaching for our age.

Men have sown unbelief, debt-living, a trust in what civil government can do for them rather than faith in God. They have looked to politicians for salvation rather than to Jesus Christ, and they have paid their taxes to the state and neglected their tithes to the Lord. They have given their children everything except godly nurture, and they have been rich to themselves and poor to God. Now, as they begin to see the harvest developing, they ask blindly, “Where did I go wrong?”

They want a harvest of blessings they never sowed for, and they want a Sabbath peace and rest they have always defiled, and they wonder at the results because they are blinded by their sins.

The house without foundations is destined to collapse in the storms of history, whereas the life built upon the rock of ages, Jesus Christ, will emerge secure and strong.

Look to your foundations. What is your life founded on? Where is your trust? Your life depends on it. AMEN.

13 April 2018

What is self-deception? For this article, let us say that it is allowing ourselves to be persuaded against the evidence for some point of view. In other words, we don’t want to believe the truth; thus, we manufacture “reasons” against it. We are all guilty of this to some extent.

When we say something negative about some of the pet sins of our culture, we often get screaming back, and screaming without an ounce of logic or evidence of their position on some moral point.

But how does their response demonstrate that they are suppressing the truth and self-deceived? One can recognize this kind of self-deception by its immediate response to the light, for without even considering what the truth is, he rejects it. When someone opposes him, there is immediate suppression of the truth.

When the emotion kicks in, the brain kicks out. The interesting thing is that they do precisely what God said they would do: Hate the light, hate the gospel, hate Christians, and because they cannot harm the Triune God, they seek to harm Christians who represent Him.

Consider several passages on self-deception:

From Romans chapter 1:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. (Romans 1:18 ESV)

20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. They are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (Romans 1:20-21 ESV)

From the Gospel of John chapter 3:

19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

Again from 1 John chapter 1:

If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. (1 John 1:6)

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8)

If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. (1 John 1:10)

Notice the progression downward in these three verses from 1 John chapter 1: v. 6 is deceiving others; v. 8 is deceiving ourselves; and v. 10 is deceiving God, or attempting to do so. God, of course, cannot be deceived. Moreover, notice that they use unrighteousness to push the truth out of their minds. In other words, they immediately hold back righteous thoughts by identification with sin, and then they dare anyone to say anything under penalty of screaming and bearing false witness. It seems to me that what we have in Romans one, John three, and 1 John 1 is self-deception in this form:

What the heart desires, the will embraces, and the mind justifies

To put this another way, it is not lack of reason that keeps non-Christians from faith—though they claim that—but that their faith (or better, unbelief) leads them to adopt whatever reason works at the moment to promote their agenda. To restate it, their commitment to their sin in the heart means their will has a commitment to that sin, and then they use their minds to justify a position already embraced. It is never the reverse; that is, that the mind leads them to embrace something in the will, and then the will forces the heart to embrace the sin. No, what we see in Romans 1, John 3, and 1 John 1 is that self-deception begins with the sinful heart, with the person’s desires for some sin that God forbids. Then they embrace that sin with a vengeance, they commit to it with their sinful wills, and then, and only then, they seek to justify the sin with the mind, with evidences.

It is not an intellectual problem with unbelievers; it is a moral problem. They embrace some sin and then use the mind to justify the sin. Thus, the nature of their deception is embracing sin with their hearts or sinful natures. Then their will embraces what they desire, and the finally the mind seeks to justify it. We Christians have an enormous responsibility to help them see the wonderful light of Jesus Christ less they perish.

No one fails to become a Christian because he demands more intellectual proof but because he hates the Triune God, hates His righteousness as revealed in His commandments, and wants to practice some sin that the Triune God forbids. Unbelief is never an intellectual problem but a moral problem. The unbeliever uses his intellect as a cover for self-deception; he WANTS sin and HATES righteousness. That is the problem and nothing else. AMEN. Ω

(c) The Very Rev.Dr. Curtis I. Crenshaw, Th.D.

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP. Polyamory is two or more in a “committed” relationship. I thought polyamory was far out enough, but I did predict it in my book on the Ten Commandments (NOT Ten Suggestions) as basically group sex. I recently saw on Forensic TV a real case where three young men in their 20s gave rings to one another and vowed to remain true for life to one another. But disobedience to God’s law brings self-destruction. It was not long that one of the male lovers murdered one of the three, and the two who remained broke up. That was not a shock.

As for sologamy, instead of “marrying” two or more, you marry yourself. I’m not joking. It is a movement in Russia, Europe, Japan, and other nut case countries, like the good ole USA. Here is a link to it:

If you follow the link, you’ll find a woman marrying herself, with 500 people attending. So what will she call herself, “Mrs. Me”? What were the vows like, “I promise to love me in life and in death, in sickness and in health, until I nullify this marriage from me?” Was the “marriage” sealed with “I promise to love the Lord myself with all the narcissism I can muster?” Now this is one marriage I did not anticipate in my book!

Here is a quote from the article in the link above:

At its core, self-marriage is a classic rite of passage with three obligatory stages: separation, liminality and incorporation. The first stage – symbolic death – serves to break all ties that no longer serve you. The second stage is all about ‘discovering’ your new love for yourself, through techniques such as self-addressed love letters and poems. And, finally, the third stage, the big shebang: the wedding ceremony, meant to seal the bond between You and You, through your choice of self-declared vows.

This is the height of narcissism, or the depth. How can there be any legal status to such a “marriage”? “Love” has been completely eviscerated of any meaning, for by definition love is directed to another person. I found this bit of news on the Internet:

State and Government Recognition. Self-marriages do not require a marriage certificate. This is because self-marriages are not recognized by any states in the United States. . . . That means that if you are already married to another person, you can still self-marry without implicating anti-bigamy or polygamy laws. Jan 28, 2015

But it gets worse.

Now, some people are marrying their pets! Again, I’m not making this stuff up. As far as I know, you cannot marry your dog or cat in the USA, but you can in Bali. I predicted marriage to pets, group marriage, and even euthanasia for those who for whatever reason cannot cope with life.

In France, one woman was allowed to marry her dead fiance, and they can still do so if it can be proved that they had formally planned for their wedding. There seems to be no end to degeneration. Here is what one wise man said:

John Dryden, the seventeenth century English poet, said:

“For those whom God to ruin has design’d,
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.”

(c) (Curtis Crenshaw, ThD, 2017)

A good friend sent me a link to another notch down into family self-destruction. If you can stomach it, CLICK HERE. The essence of the article is that now a Southern Baptist preacher is recommending polyamory, which “means the practice or condition of participating simultaneously in more than one serious romantic or sexual relationship with the knowledge and consent of all partners.” In other words, group sex, which means more “family” destruction.

This blog is from my book titled NOT Ten Suggestion that came out in 2010. Here is what I said.

Then there are consequences of same sex unions on the family. One is that such unions cannot reproduce, which means that they will pressure others to have children for them or seek to dominate the adoption agencies once these unions are legal. Will affirmative action apply here? Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Iowa have given gays the right to “marry” so far in early 2009. Will these unions be recognized in the other states?

During the early history of this country, many settlers took their families west to settle. They were often given land by the government. With their families, they reproduced and grew to large numbers; but if they had been same sex “unions,” they would have become extinct.

With heterosexual couples, a new person can be created in the image of both parents. This is one of the most profound acts of love God has given us. With homosexual couples, we only have reciprocal masturbation with no possibility of reproducing. Thus from nature itself we learn that same sex unions are not right since the species cannot be propagated. If all were gay, the human race would become extinct.

Then will male gay couples pay others to have someone’s seed implanted into some woman to have a child for them? Will female gay couples have someone’s seed implanted into them, perhaps simultaneously, to have children, and who will decide what donor’s seed? In either case, if they “divorce,” whose children are they?

Lutzer reports:

Because gay couples cannot produce children on their own, James Skillen of the Center for Public Justice predicts that hopeful parents may seek to rent wombs and deny children to know their biological parents. “It is going to be increasingly possible to produce, buy, and sell children, because in addition to adoption, that is the only way homosexual couples can ‘have’ children.” Whether raised by lesbians or two homosexual men, these children will be denied either a mother or a father.[1]

And if children are adopted, which person will be the mother and which the father? What kind of confusion will that produce when they are shopping at Kroger, and the child in the same sex union sees another child call his female parent “Mom” and his male parent “Dad”? Will he ask his “parents” why he has two men as parents or two moms? Will there be laws made to change the speech to accommodate the gays? George Orwell’s 1984 is here with newspeak. Same sex unions generally seek to erase the distinction between male and female, and that just can’t be done. It is interesting that one of the partners often takes a female or male role, for we cannot live life without assuming God’s categories. Besides the emotional differences, the “plumbing” is different. One cannot permanently alter the definition of marriage as one male and one female, for it not only violates God’s command, but it also violates the way we were created. Once marriage is redefined, other groups will want even looser definitions of marriage, such as group marriages. It is not really new definitions of marriage that is wanted, but the destruction of marriage.

Another argument from nature is that it should be obvious, without getting too graphic, that women are made to receive the male organ whereas men are not. The female vagina receives the male penis, sperm is deposited, egg is fertilized, and in nine months a human baby is born. That is natural and how everyone comes into the world. The anatomical difference and complementary nature of male and female is too obvious to need detailed explanation.

Moreover, we must not think that giving in to homosexuals to marry will appease them. They and others will only demand more liberties. Sin is never satisfied, and the sinner, given what he demands, will only demand more to try to reach the same thrills. (Chamberlain thought he could appease Hitler but only discovered that he demanded even more.) The punishment for deviant behavior is for God to give them over to even more bazaar behavior (Romans 1:24-28). The only way to stop this freefall is to confront them with righteousness, and to press the claims of Christ, His love, and forgiveness on them, for only He can stop the dominoes from falling.

Moreover, these unions do not usually remain monogamous, which can mean the spread of AIDS, and if there are children, they will adopt the same lifestyles. Tammy Bruce, a former gay insider, reports that male homosexuals “have hundreds of sex partners a year while spreading an incurable disease or two.”[2] (Blood banks will not allow male homosexuals to give blood even if they have had only one encounter because of the high risk of diseases.) This adds to the instability of home life for those involved and especially for the innocent children. From rectal and oral sex, there is infectious hepatitis, which increases the risk of liver cancer, fatal rectal cancer, not to mention HIV and AIDS, and a 30 year decrease in life expectancy.[3] “The American Psychiatric Association Press reports that ‘30% of all 20-year old gay men will be HIV positive or dead of AIDS by the time they are age 30.’ ”[4] Add to this the demand that the government pays for all these diseases, and we have an economic meltdown, not only from the medical bills but also from the decreased productivity in the market of those who cannot work, and those who must take care of them.

Moreover, whom will the children “marry”? Where will they find “spouses” since their “parents” cannot reproduce, and others they associate with cannot reproduce? “Love” does not justify these relationships, for love is not subjectively defined, as we saw in Chapter 2, VI, but is defined by God’s law. Will these children adopted by gays want to find out who their natural parents are? Will that be deemed unconstitutional? It irks them that every child that comes into the world is the product of one man and one woman, which is a constant reminder that they are wrong. Will there be a push to have human cloning so gays can have children?

But only one male and one female can reproduce both their images in the new offspring. Cloning one parent will not do so. Adopting will not do so. Planting male sperm into a female egg of a lesbian partner will not do so, for the other “parent” contributed nothing. Only the one impregnated will have a relationship with the “father,” the child being in the image of the donor father and receptor mother, but not the other female partner. The female partner will have no biological relationship at all with the child. Two (or more) males won’t be able to receive any implanting. They will be left to cloning or adopting.

This will be devastating to the children and family as they fight over who has the right to rear the child, to make rules, and when “divorces” inevitably occur, who will have the right to the children? As it stands now, when a man and woman marry, and if one had children before the marriage and the other one did not adopt them, if they divorce, the childless parent does not have the right to visit the child. How will this work out in people of the same sex when males “marry” and one has a child or when lesbians “marry,” and only one gives birth, or “marries” with a child? In all cases, the children will be the victims.

Then there will be a move to legitimize unions between three or more of both sexes, group marriages. Do not think that the radical sexual movement will stop with gay unions of two partners; they want complete sexual anarchy—pan sexuality. Have you heard of LGBT: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender? The dominoes are falling, and one sin inevitably leads to another; the only way to stop these dominoes is to come to Christ and to His law-word. “Triad” marriages are already being put forward, according to Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. There is no one who has a stop-gap morality by the grace of God and the Gospel to stop the disintegration except Christians.

On a Phil Donahue talk show some years ago, I saw three who were living together, two men, and a woman. The men were homosexuals and the woman a lesbian who had her various partners visit her. But once in a while one of the men would go to the other part of the house to have sex with the woman so they could have a child, which they did, a little girl. They did not care which man was the father. All of them claimed to be her parents. When the audience asked the three what sexual orientation they wanted for their daughter, they all said together, “happy.” That meant she was being taught complete license in her sex life; all options were on the table.

Then it becomes more bizarre with four or five having legal status as a “union.” What happens when one wants to “divorce” the others? Who will pay what, and who will get what children? Then we will have a completely permissive society with God knows how many children who don’t have a clue who their real parents are, and who will be taught that it does not matter. They will truly be the victims. We will be a jungle, mating like animals with no accountability. How can children honor father and mother if they don’t know who they are? With no real commitment to anyone but ourselves, we’ll sink into total narcissism (and are sinking now) and sexual “freedom” (read: “enslavement”) with the motto that “anything goes.” Pedophilia will seem mild.

Such legal group “marriages” will essentially be farms to raise children on, with multiple partners, like farm animals that breed with one another, producing many offspring, but with no direction, no morality. Because we have lost the vertical standard with God, we have lost the ability to define right and wrong between ourselves. As soon as the Triune God is removed as the standard for morality, there is no objective way to define human relationships. There will be no families, just individuals seeking their own interests, not the well being of others in a family. And who in the world will be the in-laws to all these people? Who will be the grandparents? Millions of motherless and fatherless kids will be produced.

Within “families” there will be horrendous confrontation built in between parents, between children, and between parents and children. To make matters worse, a straight couple marry and have their own children. Then one of them leaves the marriage for a person of the same sex, and gets divorced from the original marriage to “marry” the same sex partner. Now who gets the children? Judges’ hands will be tied, for the children, even of an innocent Christian parent, will have to live in a gay situation, or at the least to have visitation rights. The souls of the children will be in jeopardy, for God says that those who practice sinful sex will perish unless they repent (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

Then the public schools will be full of gay people, and students are already being primed to accept that orientation and to castigate any who disagree, especially Christians. What will this do to those children who come from godly homes, or just from homes who do not want their children exposed to sexual promiscuity? Since God’s Ten Commandments have to be rejected to promote this errant lifestyle, what will this do to the children’s morals in general? As an increasing number of Christians take their children out of such schools to put them in private schools, those who promote such a lifestyle will seek to pass laws to prevent such, or to make it financially difficult, if not impossible. Don’t forget that those who promote such lifestyles are not neutral—they hate those who oppose them, as evidenced by the recent gay riots in California when the gay marriage law did not pass. The anger on their faces said it all.

I just heard on the national news (Fox News April 2009) that some gays are claiming discrimination against Knoxville and Nashville public schools that block students from gay sites on school computers.

The ACLU, in a tersely worded letter, told the schools Wednesday it would sue them if the sites don’t come back online. The blocked sites include the Human Rights Campaign, Marriage Equality USA, the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, the Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and Dignity USA.[5]

Of course, the opponents say they are not in favor of the gay porn sites (for now), just the “regular” gay sites. Is it possible to have a gay site that is not porn? That means that all the kids will have access to such sites, which in turn means more children convinced that God’s morality is obsolete. Indeed, this means gays are targeting our children, right now, using the ACLU to place children into their hands. They must convert others to their cause since they cannot reproduce, and they will go after the most vulnerable of society. Perhaps some of them have no interest in children. Perhaps some of them are very sincere about their relationship with another of the same sex, but as we’ve explained many times in this book, sincerity is not the issue; truth is the issue. Some will resent it, but how is this new pursuit of gay web sites in public schools not some form of pedophilia? Should I not warn regarding the moral safety of our children, as God requires (Ezekiel 33)? Moreover, I’m not aware of any instance of a country giving itself over to a homosexual lifestyle that did not also embrace pedophilia. In other words, they demand complete sexual freedom of every kind, and will stop at nothing to get it. Accepting sinful behavior breaks down barriers, leading them further from the truth, their consciences having become seared (1 Timothy 4:2).

But whose morality is defining porn, and how long will it be before any site will be legally open to public school children because it can’t be defined, or because of alleged free speech? Once the vertical goes, anything goes. Recall what I said in Part 1: once God is removed, morality will be reduced to its lowest common denominator with the government moderating. The dominoes are falling, now. Christians must get their children out of the public schools, and put them in Christian schools, and then monitor them closely, or home school them. Remember that sin does not stand still, but like water it seeks it lowest level.

Then there is GLSEN (Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network) that has a workshop for those ages 14-21 in some public schools to teach children how lesbians have sex, and other practices too awful even to describe in this book.[6] Then President Obama appointed Kevin Jenkins as the Safe School Czar who is the founder of GLSEN. Notice the word “safe,” which is another euphemism.

It gets worse, if possible. Peter Singer has been teaching relativism at Princeton University. He has been hailed as a brilliant scholar. He has written on the positive aspects of bestiality, describing a dog and a human, to which Bruce said “he has made Princeton unsafe both for your child and your beagle.”[7]

How would you like your children taught by people who had been trained by Judith Levine, highly respected in academia, who wrote Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex?[8] Levine has the audacity to state that Christians who protect their children from sex until they are married “are more harmful to minors than sex itself.”[9] Our families are being targeted for destruction, and the public schools are the means to bring this about.

Lutzer reports in his book:

The San Francisco Unified School District has a lesson plan for teaching kindergarteners and first graders about homosexuality. It defines a family as a “unit of two or more persons, related either by birth or by choice, who may or may not live together. . . .”[10]

But with one man and one woman committed to one another for life, they can have their own children; and no one loves children like the original parents, for they are created in the image of both parents, even looking like them. This godly relationship produces stability, security, knowing who they are, who their parents are, and what morality is.

Today we might say it this way: “Those whom God would destroy, He first makes mad.”

SELF-DECEPTION

Many liberals today promote their kingdom through deception, by making a career of bearing false witness. They lie like rugs. They think that they can build a kingdom that will last 1,000 years by basing it on deception. Logic: Lying produces a thriving nation while telling the truth is destructive.

They think they can build a strong society by the destruction of its most innocent citizens, babies, murdered in their “safe” wombs of their “caring” mothers. Logic: Killing babies will give us more and better citizens than loving them and caring for them.

They think they can have a thriving economy by stealing from the productive to give to the unproductive. Logic: Stealing is productive while producing is stealing. Of course, we all want to help the poor; that is not the issue. Rather, the issue is what is the best way to help them? Is it by decapitalizing the productive? Is it by destroying those nasty rich people who dare to supply jobs to those who need them?

Many liberals engage in self-deception by thinking that more and more free money will help everyone. Logic: printing unbacked “money” will make us all rich. Answer: You can’t lift yourself up by your bootstraps, your back will break.

Self-destruction is what these people produce. They are blinded to their sins and “open minded” to destruction. Consider these two passages about self-deception:

This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.

6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

7 But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. (1 John 1:5-10 NKJ)

Notice the progression down: We lie to others (v. 6); we lie to ourselves (v. 8); we lie to God (v. 10). Those who hate God self-destruct. The way out of the spiral down is given in the odd number verses: we look to the blood of Jesus Christ, and we confess our sins to God Almighty, claiming the blood. That is the ONLY way to avoid self-destruction.

Second passage:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Romans 1:18 ESV).

The context of Romans 1:18 is that those who give themselves over to same gender relationships think it is ok and that nothing will go wrong in their lives. Self-deception may be noted when someone refuses to consider opposing arguments. Self-deception may be noted when someone thinks he can oppose God’s morality with impunity. Self-deception may be noted when someone reacts violently to truth without thinking. They believe the lie to Eve that she could violate God’s word without consequences; indeed, she would be better off.

APATHY

Christians must minister to those who are caught in the bans of sin, whether sexual sin, illegal drugs, arguing against God and His written word, being mean spirited to others, worshipping their own self-made gods, squandering their time, disobedience to parents, murdering, stealing, bearing false witness, coveting, etc. We too are sinful, and we struggle with various sins, including the ones just mentioned. One difference is that we seek repentance by His grace.

We Christians are told that we need more money. We should not pray, “Our Father who art in heaven, give us this day our daily bread,” but “Our faith who art in control, give us this year, our yearly bread.” With that prayer, we only have to worry about money once a year. We must think bigger than one day. How much faith do you have, anyway?

[Parody]

If we Christians would only pray with faith, we could prey on those who take our money from us. Pray then prey is our motto.

When some ignorant people quote St. Paul as saying, “The love of money is the root of all evil,” they did not look at the original gibberish, for it really says “The lack of money is the root of all evil.” Therefore, we must confess verbally, audibly, the true understanding of St. Paul. Moreover, our attitude is seen in the Boomer Bible. Consider this Psong:

Psong 23: Money Matters

Money is my thing:

It’s all I want.

It makes the grass look greener;

it stills the deepest waters.

It restores my self-esteem;

It takes me wherever I want to go,

For my own sake.

And even though I have a life-threatening disease,

I won’t be afraid, because I’ll have Money with me;

and the doctor and his staff will do everything possible to comfort me, [for Money, of course].

Money keeps bread on the table,

Even though I have enemies;

Money makes me look good, too;

My jar is just overflowing with Money.

And surely now I’ve figured it out:

Money will follow me all the days of my life;

And no matter what happens,

I’ll be in the Money forever. [So there.]

Some silly Christians quote St. James as reportedly saying that “faith without works is dead,” but if they would only consult the Swahili-Antepenult behind the original gibberish, they would see that what James really said was “faith without cash is dead.”

[On the serious side]

Now Money is what Christians seek for their security. We do not take seriously Matthew 6:33: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matt. 6:33 NKJ)

We want security through money rather than through the Lord. We think we can advance God’s kingdom by hordes of money rather than by holiness. We attend worship when there is nothing else to do. We watch sports rather than read our Bibles. When we occasionally go to church, we want to feel good, not be challenged to fight the world, our flesh, and the devil. The Bible has become a popular self-improvement manual to help us feel good.

We are pathetic because we are apathetic.

One wonders who will be destroyed first, the God-haters or Christians by their “successful” worship, positive books, and creation of their own providence by speaking into the air?

And make no mistake that God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is not one to challenge or to ignore. Those self-deceived challenge Him while we Christians ignore Him. Pick your poison. AMEN. Ω

(The Rev. Dr. Curtis Crenshaw, Th.D.)

In this day when some churches are turning away from the Bible, it is refreshing to know that many are not. Those who reject the Bible as God’s revelation of Himself to us must have a new concept of God. And where do they get this standard? They must invent it. Often I hear these people say God is like . . ., and they rattle off something. But how do they know God is like whatever they say? And how can we know the details of what God is like unless He tells us? Indeed, how can we know anyone unless that person reveals himself or herself to us?

Many years ago I worked at an investment and insurance firm while I was helping to start a church. The man who hired me claimed to be a Christian, knew the language of Christians, and could pray quite well. (He prayed in order to prey on Christians.) After a short period, I discovered that he was a con man, selling faulty investments to those he could deceive. I and others thought we knew him, but he had not revealed his true self. Likewise, we cannot dream up concepts of God, and say what He is like, for that would be creating a god after our own image. The only way we can know Him is if He reveals Himself to us, and the Bible makes that claim hundreds of times. Of course, in theory the Bible could be wrong in its claim—but that is way beyond this article—but at least we must see that the Church has also presented the Bible as God’s revelation for 2,000 years, and it has challenged anyone to show its errors.

Then there are those who say the Bible is only infallible in theological matters but not in history, science, and so forth. But like those who invent a concept of god, these people transfer infallibility to themselves, for they assume that they can infallibly discern which portions of the Bible are infallible and which are not. In other words, infallibility does not go away; it only gets moved around.

And what does the Bible say about itself? There are two passages in particular that are key in the Bible’s presentation of inspiration. First, is 2 Peter 1:20-21:

20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, 21 for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”

There are several points here. Peter is emphatic that God is the source of Scripture even while men wrote them. Moreover, God used their human personalities to accomplish an infallible result. In other words, the Bible is both human and divine. Like the Son of God who was both God and man in one person, so the scriptures are both human and divine, yet one, and infallible. Furthermore, Peter says that the scriptures were not “private interpretation,” which means not initiated by men for their own personal doctrines. No, they received them from God Himself. Peter is not saying they were passive pens so that God dictated every word, but that the source was from God. This indicates that the human authors did not originate the message, but rather they were carried along by the Holy Spirit when writing Scripture, receiving the message from Him. They were passive in the message, but active in the writing, using their own vocabulary and personalities.

The second key passage of the Bible regarding its own inspiration is: 2 Timothy 3:16:

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.”

The word “inspired” means “God-breathed” in the sense that God is the source. It does not carry an active idea so that Scripture is inspiring (though surely it is!) but the passive sense means “inspired,” a body of truth that is fossilized. Nor does it mean “every Scripture inspired by God is . . .” so that there may be some Scripture not inspired by God, as the RSV so wrongly translated some years back. The idea is that every part of the Bible is equally inspired, breathed out from God Almighty, and therefore infallible.

Moreover, Christ agreed that the Bible was infallible when He spoke about the Old Testament.

For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled” (Matt. 5:18).

The word “jot” most likely means “yod,” the smallest Hebrew letter, and “tittle” means part of a Hebrew letter, perhaps the difference between similar letters, like the cross on a vertical line in English that distinguishes the letter “l” from the letter “t”. But the Lord’s view was that Old Testament’s infallibility was clearly down to the very words and letters. Also, in John 10:35, He stated:

The Scripture cannot be broken.

He often rested His final argument on the infallible authority of the Old Testament (see John 5:39; Luke 24:44-45; Matt. 22:29; John 7:19; Matt. 4:1-11).

Let us confess with our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the Church of all ages, that the Bible is God’s gift to us, that we know God because in its pages is revealed this one, Triune God. Let us not seek to invent a god who is more palatable to modern people.

So what are some implications of the Bible being objective and infallible? We must honor it as we honor Him. We must seek its truth with our whole hearts, and delight in obeying His commands. We Christians do not have to wonder what is right and wrong because it is clearly spelled out in Holy Scripture. At one time, our whole culture believed that.

As a man who has been involved with selling and promoting good Christian books virtually all my life, both inside and outside the church, I can tell you what sells. It is not books on God’s commands, such as my 400+ page work on the Ten Commandments. People want health and wealth, not holiness. If you can make people—not God—the center of attention, you will build a large church. I did my ThD thesis on the word-faith movement, and one of the main leaders wrote a little book that sold by the untold thousands, perhaps millions. The title tells it all: How to Write Your Own Ticker with God. He said that Jesus knocked on his door at home, and this “prophet” of God invited Him in. Jesus then allegedly told him four things (or was it five) that anyone can do to get what he wants from God the Father. Where is the Bible in this? Why can’t we just obey God and not worry about how much money we can con out of Him? Why can’t we be content with what He gives us and not complain for more?

Moreover, just as we cannot create physical law into existence, so we cannot create moral law into existence, and to think that we can only reveals that we believe the lie of the devil to Eve:

You shall be as God, knowing [or determining] good and evil (Genesis 3:5).

Since the fall of man into sin in the garden in Eden, man has deceived himself into thinking that he can make up his own ethics without incurring consequences, but the past few thousand years demonstrate otherwise. Nevertheless, he continues his restless pursuit of private morality independent from God, so that he does not have to give account. This is why we find people engaging in rationalizing and self-justification when they are caught doing something wrong; they think they are above judgment, living under the system of morality they allegedly created. Their judgment will be severe. AMEN. Ω